


An Anatomically Incorrect Diagram of Love At First Sight

by sinkingsidewalks



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-09-30 11:04:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17222825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinkingsidewalks/pseuds/sinkingsidewalks
Summary: She feels eyes on her, a tingle crawling up the back of her neck, and assumes it’s him looking. Taking another sip of champagne, she turns on her heel, an eyebrow already raised to tell him thatno, they can’t leave yet, except instead of Scott’s familiar hazel eyes she meets a foreign, cool grey stare.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So my hand slipped. Someone on tumblr (sorry whoever you are, I absolutely cannot remember) posted about enemies to lovers and this just happened. Hope you enjoy?  
> This is a work of complete fiction.

Tessa grips the delicate stem of a champagne glass, her fingers sliding in the condensation that drips off the glass. The room is overheated for the amount of bodies crushed into it, even with the brisk January wind whipping past the windows. She shifts in her heels, which are new and biting at her Achilles, and glances around the room for someone she recognizes. 

She’s usually far more comfortable at these fundraiser things, she’s certainly had enough practice at them over the last few years. She likes to think she’s gotten almost good at the art of it – remembering who’s married and who isn’t, telling menial stories about her niece that are cute but hollow – but she’s had the week from hell – the pipes in her house burst and her basement flooded, her car battery died _twice_ , and when she finally surrendered to her desire to drown her frustration in more calories than she should eat in a week, Loblaws was all out of chocolate fudge brownie ice cream – and all she really wants to do is curl up in bed and decompress.

So of course tonight is the night she has an event she just can’t skip. 

Scott’s there too at least, she can hear his laugh rolling over the noise of the crowd, which still steadies her in a way nothing – and no one – else can. 

She feels eyes on her, a tingle crawling up the back of her neck, and assumes it’s him looking – it’s always him looking, has been since she turned fifteen and (almost, sorta) grew boobs. Taking another sip of champagne, she turns on her heel, an eyebrow already raised to tell him that _no, they can’t leave yet_ , except instead of Scott’s familiar hazel eyes she meets a foreign, cool grey stare. 

The bubbles in the champagne get caught in her throat in surprise and she has to blink rapidly to keep the burn down her throat from turning into tears. 

The eyes belong to a woman Tessa’s never seen before. Her long blonde hair is bone straight, cascading over the shoulders of a little black dress that shows nothing from her neck to her wrists, but ends well above the middle of her thigh. 

She smirks at Tessa from across the room, like she’s caught Tessa’s stumble, and the frustrations of the week bubbles over. Instead of dancing her gaze away and across the room like she should have, Tessa glares right back. Anger boils in her, uncharacteristic and irrational, and she refuses to break the stare until this stranger does. 

The woman just keeps smirking back, apparently in no way uncomfortable, apparently with as much competitive drive as Tessa herself. She doesn’t flinch, or blink. Tessa considers what she could say, how she could march across the room. She considers if she’d be taller than the other woman in her goddamn pinching heels. 

Thankfully, Scott appears beside her, touching her elbow to introduce her to someone, and she rips her gaze away. 

 

The worst thing about New Year’s, Tessa thinks, is the influx of people crowding up her gym time with their resolutions. She’s all for self-betterment, she knows that there’s never a bad time to start building healthy habits, but at the same time she finds it hard to not be annoyed with everyone who signs up for a new membership only to forget about it when February hits. 

The thing is, she _likes_ her gym routine now. After years of strict schedules and other people dictating exactly what she can and cannot do with her body, it’s nice to be able to do the things she feels like doing, the things that make her feel good in her body. It’s also nice that her little gym in London is pretty much empty during the off hours, so she doesn’t have anyone to witness her lingering discomfort with no longer being in Olympic shape. 

But none of those things are particularly true the third week of January. Which is why she’s gripping her steering wheel hard enough for her hands to cramp trying to navigate her car through the bustling yet tiny parking lot at the gym. 

She finally spots a parking spot – after narrowly avoiding destroying her front bumper on a street light – and pulls in towards it. Only as soon as she’s turning, an SUV pulls into the spot from the other direction. 

Tessa slams on the brake and huffs out a sigh. Behind tinted glass she can see a blonde head of hair and a woman digging around in her purse. Rolling her eyes again, she drives down the aisle of the lot, getting further and further away from the gyms front doors.

An hour running – well, jogging, and walking intermittently, because she still hasn’t figured out how to run properly without setting her shins on fire – bleeds away her frustration. By the time she’s pulling her sweater and jacket back on in the change room, she feels centered, in the way only a good workout can provide. 

Until she almost stumbles into the blonde woman as she’s on her way out of the showers. 

Tessa stares at her, agape as she recognizes her as the woman from the event the week before. She takes in the long blonde hair, now damp and plastered against bare shoulders and the towel hitched up under the woman’s armpits. 

“You stole my parking spot.” Tessa blurts out, and immediately feels the blush rising to her cheeks. Even though she’s forged a feud with the woman in her mind, they’re still complete strangers, and Tessa is nothing if not polite. 

The woman smirks again. There’s ink bleeding up from her collarbones on the left side that’s easily recognizable as Olympic rings – just like the tattoo Scott has been trying to convince her to get with him since Vancouver – which adds to Tessa’s confusion. She’d never seen the woman before the event and if she’d been on the Canadian team in the last decade, Tessa would at least recognize her. 

“Sorry,” she says, sounding not apologetic in the least. 

Tessa rolls her eyes, then almost stutters out an apology, but clamps down on the words at the last second. 

They stand in the hallway of the locker room for an uncomfortable moment. Then the door opens, and it mercifully breaks the silence. They shuffle past each other. Just when Tessa’s about to reach the exit, the woman’s voice turns her back. 

“I’m Hallie, by the way.”

Tessa nods, “I’m Tessa.”

The woman, Hallie, smirks again. “I know.” Then she disappears behind a locker.

It’s infuriating. 

 

Tessa sees her every Tuesday and Thursday morning when she hops up onto the treadmill next to the one Tessa is labouring over and breaks into a comfortable, brisk, run. Tessa edges her machine up a bit faster each time, but what is slaving for her legs is barely the pace of Hallie’s warm up. 

By the end of the second week she ends up spending the evening in an ice bath in an attempt to reduce the swelling. She always thought her competitiveness was one of her better qualities. 

“Are your teeth chattering?” Scott asks, confounded over the phone. “Where the hell are you?”

“I’m fine,” she mutters back, kicking at a clump of ice cubes. Her toes are numb but her calves aren’t yet. 

“You are, you’re shivering. I can hear it.”

She should have known he wouldn’t let her get away with it. Grudgingly, she admits to the gym hours that she hasn’t changed, and the races she has with Hallie that the other woman isn’t aware of. Scott laughs at her, like she knew he would, but as always, it’s infectious and she finds herself able to giggle along with him even though her butt is numb. 

She tells him about the tattoo that peeks out from under Hallie’s sports bras – under the Nike swish, which really only fuels her irrationality – and he hums contemplatively.

“It’s just weird that she obviously knows who I am, but I have no clue who she is,” Tessa complains.

“Have you tried googling her?”

Tessa sighs, not ready to admit that she has. “I don’t know her last name, or what sport she plays, or what country for.”

“Well, you always have liked a good mystery, T!”

He laughs, she grumbles, and she wonders if she’s becoming the moody one in their retirement. 

 

On the third Thursday she concedes twenty minutes in because even though she’s competitive, there are still the voices of half a dozen doctors in her head telling her to be smart about her injury and she recognizes that what she’s been doing is decidedly not smart.

She hits the power on the treadmill just a hair too aggressively and tries not to limp back to the change rooms. As soon as the door shuts behind her, she practically collapses onto a bench, kicking off her runners and pulling her knees into her chest to rub at her shins. 

After only half a round of the purposeful breathing that’s supposed to better oxygenate her suffocating muscles the door opens again and Hallie walks through, peering around like she’s looking for something. She spots Tessa and strides over, dropping onto the bench beside her. 

“You okay?” She asks, more curious than concerned. 

“Fine,” Tessa grits out. She yanks up her leggings and digs her thumb into her shin, pressing in beside the bone, hoping for some relief. She clenches her teeth; the pain always gets worse before it gets better. 

“Woah,” Hallie says, “Scars.” Then she winces. “Shit, sorry I-“

Tessa shakes her head. “It’s fine.” They don’t bother her anymore. And unless someone is as close as Hallie is now, they’re generally unnoticeable. 

Hallie watches Tessa’s hands move as she runs her thumb down the bone from the base of her knee to the top of her foot then she slowly reaches out for Tessa’s other leg and mimics the movement. 

“This okay?” Hallie asks as she reaches Tessa’s ankle.

“Yeah,” she tries to keep her voice level but she’s still panting a bit. “Thanks.”

“As long as it helps.”

They sit in silence until the pain wanes and Tessa rolls her leggings back down to her ankle. Hallie follows suit, smoothing the elastic at the bottom flat, then she gets up and heads back into the gym. 

Tessa sits there for another fifteen minutes before she realizes that she really should be gone before Hallie comes back to shower. 

 

“So when do I get to meet her?” Scott asks as he cuts vegetables for their dinner in her kitchen. 

“What?” Tessa steals a bit of pepper from the cutting board and he glares at her while she crunches down on it but otherwise continues on. “Who?”

“You know, _the girl_.”

Tessa rolls her eyes. “Hallie, is her name, and don’t say it like that.”

“Like what?” he gives her a pointed stare but she can see beneath it that he’s pleased he’s trapped her into being the one to define it. 

“Like she’s anything other than an odd, not quite stranger.”

“I dunno Tess, you’ve been talking about her a lot.”

Tessa sighs. “Because she’s _bothersome_.”

He grins. She steals another piece of pepper and tosses it at him. 

“Whatever you say, T.” 

 

“Why do you run anyways?” Hallie asks as the treadmill starts rolling beneath her. Tessa forces herself to keep the same gentle pace. “You’re a dancer, you don’t need to run.”

It puts her off balance for some reason. The fact that Hallie would choose to define her as a dancer, not a skater, even though she knows she’s both of equal measure. 

“Scott wants to run a marathon in the spring.” And sometimes she thinks the reason they competed so well together is because he is the one person she hates losing to the most. 

“And you have to do it with him?”

Tessa shrugs. “It’s for a cause.” She listens to her own slow footfalls and Hallie’s faster ones and wonders if she’ll ever get over how slow she is in comparison to how easily she moves on the ice. 

“Scott’s your dance partner, right?”

Tessa nods. 

“But not your _partner_ partner?”

She laughs. If only everyone would be that straightforward with it. “No. No, he’s not.”

Hallie nods, “Good.”

 

Hallie gets to the gym early the next week while Tessa is still unfurling her scarf and piling her coat into a locker. They do little more than nod in greeting to one another while they shed winter clothing and prepare for their workouts. 

Tessa nods towards Hallie’s shoulder once she’s down to her tank top and asks: “are you going to stay a mystery forever or are you going to tell me what team you’re on?”

Hallie glances down at her own tattoo then motions Tessa forward. “Come see for yourself.”

Tessa steps the small space across the changing room so she’s standing right in front of the other woman. She was wrong the other day, even in her heels she still would have been shorter. She moves the loose sleeve of Hallie’s tank top off her shoulder then nudges down her sports bra until she can see the whole of the tattoo. Under the rings is red and blue, stars and stripes.

“An American,” Tessa says softly. “Is it something I’d be bitter about?”

Hallie chuckles, her breath on Tessa’s ear. “Hardly, soccer.”  
Tessa hums but doesn’t step away. Even though she should step away. It would be polite to step away. “Rio?”

Hallie shakes her head. “London, then I fucked up my knee.”

Tessa winces. She knows how that stings. She looks up and finds Hallie’s eyes, the grey of them isn’t so cold any longer. “I’m sorry.”

“I know you are.”

Then Tessa’s rising up onto her toes, her hand curled around Hallie’s shoulder, and pressing her lips into Hallie’s. The other woman jolts, surprised, but her lips are soft under Tessa’s. She leans into it, and Hallie’s hand winds into the back of Tessa’s ponytail, tilting her head back as she opens her mouth. 

Tessa rips herself back. “Fuck, sorry, shit, I shouldn’t have. Sorry.” She stumbles backwards. Her bag is still out on the bench and it’s all she grabs as she rushes out of the changing room. 

It’s only once she’s sitting in her car that she realizes the expression on Hallie’s face as she pulled away was of disappointment, not disgust. 

 

She’s in her bath again when she calls Scott, although instead of ice, this time she’s filled the water with lavender scented bubbles in a failing attempt to relax. 

“So I kissed her.” Tessa says into the phone when she hears it connect, not allowing Scott to greet her. 

“Are you having a sexuality crisis again? Because I am no more equipped to deal with that now than when I was twenty.”

“What? No.” Tessa shakes her head adamantly. “I’m having a… I don’t know, a relationship crisis?”

“What’s the crisis? Was it not a good kiss? Did she freak out?”

“No,” Tessa sighs. “I kind of… ran away.”

“So you freaked out.”

She wishes he was there so she could splash him. “I guess. It just… was weird? Was it weird? I don’t even know if she’s gay. What if she just wants to be friends?”

“T, I’m not really the person you should be asking these things.”

She groans. “When did you get all logical and grown up?”

He laughs and hangs up on her and she sinks her head under the bubbles.

 

Tessa waits shivering outside the gym two days later. Spring should be just around the corner but it doesn’t remotely feel like it and she’s going to have to bail on her plan soon if Hallie doesn’t show. But just as she’s deliberating between going inside and sweating out her feelings and getting back in her car, the same SUV that stole her spot weeks ago pulls into the lot.

“Hi,” Tessa says as Hallie gets out of her car and approaches the gym.

“Hey.” Hallie leads them towards the gym. “I’ve got your coat in my car because I wanted an excuse to see you again.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“No problem.” 

Tessa hesitates in front of the door. “Do you want to get dinner tonight?”

Hallie grins, holding the door open for Tessa. “I’d love to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Let me know what you think and if you want to find me on tumblr I'm @sinkingsidewalks there as well  
> Edit: so everyone seems to want more of this... tell me what kinds of things you want to see in comments or on tumblr maybe?


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A growing relationship ft. dates, injuries, and annoying skating partners

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Twelve years later and I'm finally back with this old thing. Although I had probably too much fun with this chapter. Huge thanks to peacefulboo for talking soccer with me, everything that's right is their doing and anything that's wrong is mine!

It’s their second date that Tessa is nervous for. The first was too rushed, filled with the adrenalin of confrontation, for her to work up a good anxious spiral, but when two days after their dinner Hallie sent her a text asking if she wanted see a movie the following weekend it settled a nervous pit in her stomach. 

Because Tessa really likes her. And that hasn’t happened in a while.

She likes how loudly, unapologetically herself she is, yet when Hallie talked about spending summers in Ontario with her mom’s family her voice went soft with nostalgia. How she got so enthused when she started talking about art she was almost tripping over her words and how she smiled into their gentle goodnight kiss as they parted ways. 

So Tessa changes three times in the hour leading up to their date and tries four different shades of lipstick before settling on the first one she chose. 

She gets to the theater ten minutes early, sits in her car fiddling with her jewelry for five of them before staring herself down in the rear-view mirror. She’s won the Olympics; she shouldn’t be nervous for a simple movie date. The pep-talk she gives herself is Olympic program sized anyway, but it does the trick. Sending out a silent prayer not to be recognized, she heads into the building. 

 

“Wanna come up?” Hallie asks as they linger outside her apartment building after their third date – a late lunch at a little café and a walk around town. 

“Sure,” Tessa says, tucking a flyaway hair behind her ear. It had been a good afternoon; one she doesn’t want to end. Initially she’d been nervous about walking around the city with no goal in sight, usually she goes pretty unnoticed in London but the last thing she wants on a date is an overenthusiastic fan bombarding them. But they’d only been approached twice. (“So you’re like, actually famous, huh?” Hallie said jokingly, seeming unbothered by the intrusion, after the second and Tessa had only been able to blush.)

Hallie’s apartment is three floors up in an old building a little outside the center of the city. They pass a neighbour on her way down the stairs while Hallie digs her keys out on the landing and Hallie greets her by name, but the woman doesn’t linger. The narrow hall Hallie lets them into is cramped, but only because canvases are stacked up against the walls on either side. 

“Sorry about the…” Hallie gestures around at the canvases as she ushers Tessa into the main room. “They were at my grandmother’s house before it sold and I haven’t had a chance to take the bigger ones to storage yet.”

“They’re incredible,” Tessa says, looking at a piece leaning inside a bricked up and painted over old stone fireplace. It’s abstract, a swirl of grey and blue and green Tessa thinks looks like it could be a seascape. “I know you said you painted but I didn’t realize you _painted_.”

Hallie laughs, “Yeah, it might be bordering on obsession these days.” She steps through an open doorway to the kitchen. “You want coffee? Or tea? Or something else?”

“Coffee’s good,” Tessa says, looking around. The space is small but not cramped, a couch and TV in one corner, table and chairs in the other, and an easel set up in front of the window with a half finished work set on the stand. 

It’s all just a little bit startling. Everything she’s learned so far about Hallie has been precise, she speaks her mind when she has something to say, she’s goal oriented and determined, an athlete – like Tessa – but the paintings are all outside the lines. 

The whole apartment is homey, lived in and worn around the edges in a way that makes Tessa want to snuggle into the sofa and take a nap. She sits on the edge of the couch and thinks about how she likes that it doesn’t feel contradictory for the Hallie she’s been getting to know, just surprising, with late afternoon light spilling through the windows. The feeling is only more cemented when a large, fluffy tabby cat leaps onto the couch next to her. 

“That’s Barnacle,” Hallie says handing Tessa a mug of coffee. “He’s a ham for new people, I can shut him away if he’s bothersome.” She shoos the cat aside to sit on the other end of the sofa and he climbs onto Tessa’s lap instead, nudging at the back of her hand for attention.

“It’s okay,” Tessa says, scratching between his ears. Barnacle settles down onto her legs, purring with content. “You didn’t mention him.”

“He’s not mine. My aunt is having her house renovated and couldn’t have him there with the contractors and my other aunt is allergic so he ended up with me for the time being.”

Tessa nods, understanding, scratching the cat again when he meows his discontent after she stopped, and they sit in almost awkward silence for a minute. 

“Netflix?” Hallie asks, breaking them out of it.

“Sure.” Tessa answers, grinning when Hallie tucks herself into Tessa’s side after getting up to grab the remote.

 

Hallie doesn’t talk about her knee and Tessa doesn’t ask. (It’s not like she’s dying to get into the details, both physical and psychological, of her own injury.) She doesn’t even indulge in google as she always has in past relationships. Only digs out the bag of frozen peas meant for injuries from the back of her freezer when Hallie arrives limping after a long day, and tucks her forgotten knee brace back into her gym bag when it gets discarded on Tessa’s bathroom floor. 

Hallie talks about other things – her childhood in Boston and her strained relationship with her father’s very traditional family there, her love of art which she rediscovered while going back to school, nursing her grandmother through the last year of her life in her big empty home on Lake Erie – but never soccer, never in more than a passing comment. 

There’s the precise line of a scalpel scar running vertically down the joint of Hallie’s left knee and Tessa figures that’s all she needs to know. 

 

Tessa’s alarm goes off on her phone, too early for a Sunday morning, and she is decidedly not in her own bed. Barnacle the cat tucked up in the crook of her elbow is her first tip off, Hallie groaning against the noise of the alarm is the second. Tessa is still getting used to waking up with someone else, and in someone else’s bed – most of the nights they’ve spent together have been at her house, partly because her bed is bigger, but mostly because it contains fewer fluffy guests – so it takes her a minute to get her bearings straight. 

“Why?” Hallie groans, burrowing under a pillow as Tessa fumbles to shut off the ringing. 

“Sorry,” Tessa mumbles back. Her own head is pounding, and she belatedly thinks they maybe shouldn’t have indulged in that second bottle of wine last night. She drinks down the stale glass of water beside the bed and gets up to start rummaging through her overnight bag for clothes. 

Hallie sits up, not bothering to hold the sheets up around herself, her hair a wild nest atop her head. She blinks sleepily, adorably, and Tessa grins. 

“So, brunch?” Hallie asks and Tessa frowns, apologetic. 

“Sorry, I can’t. I told Scott I’d meet him at the rink this morning.” She glances at her phone for the time. “And I’m probably already going to be late.” She’d forgotten to reset her alarm to account for the time it’ll take her to get there from Hallie’s. 

“Next weekend then.” Hallie says, slouching back down beneath the blankets. 

“For sure.” Tessa tugs on her leggings, leans over to kiss Hallie lightly on the lips, then starts digging again for a shirt. 

“Can I come?” Hallie asks absently and Tessa hesitates, she still hasn’t introduced Hallie and Scott. 

“Not today,” Hallie corrects, “But sometime? I’d like to see you do your thing.”

Tessa nods. “Today is going to be boring, Scott wants me to look at one of his junior teams’ new programs, so I’ll just be there to nitpick. But yeah, sometime.”

“Cool.”

Tessa looks over to find Hallie grinning. “I feel like I should issue a disclaimer that we’re not in Olympic shape anymore and are considerably less impressive.”

“What, you mean you can’t backflip onto Scott’s shoulders anymore?” Hallie teases. “Or, what about the one where you do the splits on his feet?”

Tessa pauses in her rummaging, pulls on a t-shirt, and raises an eyebrow at Hallie. “You googled.”

Hallie only keeps smiling. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You googled me, and you watched programs, _lots_ of them.” 

“I can’t have a casual interest in figure skating?”

Tessa shakes her head, zipping up her bag. “Knowing the Moulin Rouge lift I would believe, but that Pink Floyd one, we haven’t done that in _years_. You showed your hand, babe, sorry.” She takes her phone from the charger beside the bed as Hallie laughs. 

“Come here,” Hallie pulls her in by the hem of her t-shirt and kisses her. Then she holds Tessa there, their faces an inch apart, and whispers, “Maybe I did.”

Tessa smiles. “You know what this means.”

“What?”

“If you get to come watch my thing,” Tessa says, repeating Hallie’s phrase from earlier, but keeping her tone light, “I get to watch you do your thing.”

Hallie hesitates for a moment but nods, bumping their noses together. “Yeah, okay.”

“Great.” Tessa darts in to kiss her again, then looks at her phone. “Now I really am going to be late.”

“You didn’t answer my question!” Hallie calls after her as she leaves the bedroom. 

“You know I can still do the splits,” Tessa says back, throwing a wink over her shoulder.

 

Tessa always meant to do this properly. She meant to warn both parties well in advance. She meant to have a little dinner party with maybe Jordan there as a buffer. She did not mean for Scott to walk into her living room on a Thursday evening and find them on her couch with her hand up Hallie’s shirt. 

He calls her name out half a second before emerging from the entrance hall and Tessa has just enough time to fling herself to the opposite end of the couch. A blush is already racing up her neck. Her cheeks must be bright red and she can’t even look at Hallie – she feels like a teenager again, caught by her parents. She ends up staring at Scott as he stands in the doorway, his eyebrows creeping towards his hairline, looking way too pleased. 

“Sorry,” he says, shit-eating grin only growing. “Didn’t know you had company.” 

The pure glee in his voice spurs her off the couch. She grabs the hem of his t-shirt and hauls him into her kitchen. 

“What the hell are you doing here?” Tessa hisses, regretting the openness of her floorplan. 

“I told you yesterday! I needed to stop by to fax some stuff to Skate Canada.”

Now that he says it, she obviously remembers. She feels like she’s burning up from the inside, is it actually possible to die from embarrassment? “Couldn’t you do it at the shop?”

“We don’t have a fax machine.”

“How can you not have a fax machine?”

“Tess, it’s a fax machine, who the hell has a fax machine these days.”

“ _I_ do, one which you are using, _gratefully_.” 

He just keeps grinning at her, then his gaze darts out to the living room. “So are you going to introduce us?”

She puts her hands on his chest and steers him out of the kitchen towards the stairs and her upstairs home office. “Only if you promise to be nice.”

“I’m always nice.” He walks backwards, letting her guide him around her furniture and waving casually at Hallie still sitting in the living room. 

“That has yet to be seen.” She grumbles, releasing him at the foot of the stairs which he bounds up. “And stop barging into my house!” She calls after him. He pauses on the landing; she can hear the glee even before he speaks. 

“I knocked, you were just otherwise occupied.”

Tessa groans, her head dropping into her hands as she falls back onto the couch. “I hate him,” she says to herself and Hallie chuckles. 

“Well at least we weren’t naked.” Hallie jokes, but starts rubbing circles with her thumb on Tessa’s upper arm soothingly. 

Tessa sighs and looks up at Hallie, already apologetic. “I’m sorry, he’s Scott, he’s had a key since I moved in and we’ve always had weird boundaries so-“

“It’s okay, Tess.” Hallie interrupts. Tessa gives her a look that is markedly disbelieving. 

“Really.” Hallie’s thumb travels down Tessa’s arm until she’s holding her hand, gently stroking the back of her hand. “I saw the Buzzfeed articles, I knew what I was getting into.”

“I highly doubt that.” Tessa grumbles. Hallie doesn’t have a chance to respond because Scott’s footsteps meet the stairs again. 

He yells down ahead, “Are you decent?”

“Fuck off!” Tessa calls back, though without vigor. 

Scott re-enters the living room. “Oooh, swearing.” Tessa rolls her eyes, but Hallie snorts, so she feels a little better. Scott sits in the chair opposite from them and raises an eyebrow at Tessa.

“Scott, Hallie Sharpe; Hallie, Scott Moir.”

“Nice to meet you,” Scott says, not even being subtle about sizing Hallie up.

“You too.” 

They sit in awkward silence for a minute, Tessa’s just about to try to Jedi mind trick Scott into leaving when Hallie speaks up again.

“We were going to order Thai for dinner, if you want to join.”

Scott looks at Tessa to ask if it’s okay with her and she nods. They might as well get this over with, she can’t keep the two most important people in her life separate for much longer. She’s honestly surprised she’s managed to keep it up for this long. 

“That sounds great,” Scott says, giving Hallie his real smile. Tessa breathes in relief.

 

“I don’t know how to ask the question.” Hallie says hours later once they’re alone again.

Tessa swallows the dregs of her wine, steeling herself before she answers. “The ‘have I ever slept with Scott?’ question?”

“Yeah, that one.”

Tessa sighs. “Yes, I have.” And she explains it, because she’s learned by now that Hallie doesn’t like mysteries. The bubble of competition, the isolation of training. How they convinced themselves that the spark between them would burn brighter if they gave it credence. The expectations they felt growing up about how they were supposed to love each other. 

“He’s my best friend,” she finishes, “And we love each other, but we just don’t _love_ each other. It’s never been romantic between us.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” She’s never been with anyone, regardless of gender, who didn’t poke and prod at her relationship with Scott. One hundred percent of her relationships have ended because of it. 

Hallie shrugs. “He’s your teammate, I get that.”

“I love you,” spills out of her lips in a rush of relief. Then her brain catches up with her mouth and she flushes bright red for the second time that day. “I mean- well not that I don’t- I just-“

Hallie laughs, and it fills her with warmth. “I love you, too.”

 

“It wasn’t even playing,” Hallie scoffs, starting the conversation out of nowhere as they lay in Tessa’s darkened bedroom. “The first time. It wasn’t even at practice.”

Tessa stays quiet, trailing her hand down Hallie’s arm to squeeze her fingers beneath the covers. Hallie speaks up to the ceiling, not looking at Tessa, but Tessa can still see the turmoil on her face. 

“I was chasing after my ex’s nephew at a Fourth of July barbeque and I hardly even felt it. It hurt, sure, but I was just running around a crappy play structure in someone’s backyard,” she laughs, hollow, but not quite angry, “I figured I just needed to stretch it. I had no idea I’d just torn it, that I’d just killed my career. Later, once it was swelling and hurting a hell of a lot more, I remembered hearing it pop.

“The next time it was in practice, and a whole lot worse. Surgery, six months’ rehab and physiotherapy. I missed the 2015 World Cup by a hair and it felt like a sign. By that point my grandma was already sick and my aunts were struggling to take care of her, so I moved up here to help out. I spent all my summers with her when I was a kid, while my parents were off being doctors and saving the world, so it felt right that I would take care of her for a while.”

“I’m sorry,” Tessa whispers, pressing a light kiss to Hallie’s shoulder.

Hallie shrugs. “It’s what happened. There are things more important than World Cups and Olympic Games.” She seems to hear herself and finally looks over at Tessa, apologetic. “I mean-“

Tessa shakes her head to stop her. “I know we weren’t saving lives out there. Being an amateur athlete is inherently selfish.” Hallie opens her mouth to argue but Tessa continues over her. “That’s when you got your masters?” 

“After she died, I couldn’t live in the house. I did my bachelors as something to keep me busy while I couldn’t play but I ended up really loving my arts classes so I went back. I threw myself into school so I didn’t have to think about her being gone.”

“Then you ended up back here,” Tessa fills in. 

“Yeah, I had to move all my stuff out of the house once my aunt wanted to sell it. And once I was here I figured London was as good a place as any to settle down.”

“Well I’m glad you did,” Tessa whispers, with another gentle kiss to Hallie’s shoulder. “Thank you for telling me.”

Hallie squeezes Tessa’s hand back in response. “I wanted you to know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, if you've gotten here I'm glad you've stuck around for this fic. I love this universe and would be down for writing more if there's anything more you want to see from Hallie. I'm around on tumblr to @sinkingsidewalks. I do have a third chapter started, who knows if it'll actually be done sooner than in a couple months time, but comments sure are healthy motivation!


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